THE ADVENTURES OF SEBASTIAN COLE: Comedy-drama. Starring Adrian Grenier and Clark Gregg. Written and directed by Tod Williams. (R. 99 minutes. At the Lumiere.)

Nice try. Every now and then there's a movie that's likable enough in a kind of out-of-sync way without being really satisfying. "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole" is one of those not completely dubious achievements.

The pleasures of this comedy-drama come in the individual characterizations, not in the picture as a whole, which never quite hits what it's aiming for.

Adrian Grenier plays the title role, a teenager whose stepfather is in the transitional phase of transsexuality, and Grenier's clearly an actor destined for better things. The stepfather is played with a sweet toughness by Clark Gregg.

The first shot of the movie is not promising. A very bloodied Grenier is wandering alone in a wasteland, and it's a good bet that the rest of the movie is going to show us what led him there.

It is upstate New York, 1983, and Hank, the long-haired stepfather in leather vest, is at a family gathering where his English wife tells her daughter and son that he has something important to tell them. Hank is going to become Henrietta. "I don't want it to change anything for us as a family," he adds.

The overly understanding wife tries to put it in a good light, the angry daughter calls it pathetic and the son wants to know if Hank's going to have his penis cut off. When Hank nods yes, Sebastian glumly sucks his straw.

Soon the mother has packed Sebastian off to England, but he returns appearing more sophisticated with streaks in his black hair and shares the house with Henrietta. "Nice look," she tells him.

Henrietta herself looks like a long-haired man in a dress, and a lot is made of people's reactions to her -- Hank is still in the pre-op stage. Sebastian's teenage buddies assume Hank is homosexual and that Sebastian might as well be, too. They confuse Hank with a drag queen.

To its credit, "The Adventures of Sebastian Cole" never gets preachy and Henrietta never fully explains her reasons. A sex change really has little to do with the act of sex but is more a matter of how a person ad dresses the world. Some men are more comfortable with themselves as middled-aged women, and Gregg, one of playwright David Mamet's informal company of actors, shows us this and creates a unique character. Hank is her own woman.

Henrietta, a lawyer, goes about her business in strapless dresses, squash blossom necklaces, lipstick and 5 o'clock shadow. She's a strong disciplinarian with the aimless Sebastian and, to his surprise, still flirts with waitresses.

Writer-director Tod Williams sets a droll tone, but occasionally it is so understated it goes flat. Several scenes seem like run-throughs, and the climax just falls off the table. It's easy to see what he's is getting at, but the effect is like an outline for the movie he'd like to make. When Sebastian says at a prom that he hates "all those dumb high school movies," better ones than this unfortunately come to mind.